(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor device having a carrier-injecting electrode of a Schottky structure, which operates under a new operating principle.
(b) Description of the Prior Art
Transistors which have been proposed in the past are represented mainly by the following three kinds. They are: bipolar transistor (hereinunder to be referred to as BPT), field effect transistor (hereinunder will be referred to as FET) and static induction transistor (hereinunder will be referred to as SIT). A BPT having a three-layer structure of either npn type or pnp type, controls its collector current by controlling the amount of injection of minority carriers which are injected into its base region from the emitter region. An FET is a majority-carrier type device designed to control its drain current by controlling the channel through which the majority carriers are allowed to flow. An SIT, on the other hand, is a device in which both the gate voltage and drain voltage, relative to source potential, influence the drain current value throughout a large range of voltage. The SIT is a device designed so that, in its main operative state, a potential barrier is produced in the vicinity of the source region or within the source region, and the amount of carriers flowing therethrough is controlled by the height of this potential barrier. In each of these three kinds of transistors the region from which carriers are injected, i.e. the source region or the emitter region, is formed with a semiconductor having a high impurity concentration.